Solar power is about to get MUCH cheaper, or so they say.

OIL PRICE: Solar Power Is About To Get MUCH Cheaper

Solar power, like Democracy, stinks. It is costly, converts very little energy from the sun into actual energy, and it mars the aesthetic appearance of many houses. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other system that has been tried”. The same thing could be said of Solar power and its various competitors.

No form of energy generation is perfect, and one unambiguous positive feature about solar is that it keeps getting better. Solar power systems today are less terrible than they were five years ago, and the ones from 2010 are better than the ones from 2005, etc.

Solar City seems poised to continue that aggressive trend of improvement in solar power. The company is in the process of building an enormous $750 million factory in Buffalo, NY that will produce 10,000 solar panels per day, or one gigawatt of power generation capacity per year. Once completed, the plant will be the largest in North America, and one of the biggest in the world. It’s hard to overstate the potential importance of this factory. If done right, the plant could catapult America to be one of the leaders in solar power in the future in the same way that the Rouge River plant made Ford Motor Company one of the world’s leading auto manufacturers. Continue to the entire article

CNBC: Portable power with solar panels you can roll up

U.K company Renovagen is looking to harness the power of the sun – wherever it shines – with “rollable” solar arrays that can be rapidly deployed in a variety of locations.

The sun is an abundant source of clean energy, and our appetite for it seems to be growing: according to a recent report from GTM Research, the solar market in the U.S. is set to grow by 119 percent in 2016.

“We’re the first company that’s actually made an entire solar farm rollable,” John Hingley, managing director of Renovagen, told CNBC’s Sustainable Energy.

“We’ve made the entire solar array, so the support structure and all of the power cabling, embedded into a single solar mat,” Hingley went on to add. Continue to the entire article

EDMONTON SUN: New solar co-op hopes to shake up Edmonton’s energy grid

A new Edmonton solar co-operative aims to do what Alberta’s rural electrical co-ops did 60 years ago and fundamentally reorganize the city’s energy grid.

When utility companies refused to extend power lines into Alberta’s rural heartland in the 1940s and 50s, farmers formed rural electrification associations to get the job done, said Warren Sarauer, board chairman of the Solar Power Investment Cooperative of Edmonton or Spice.

He said, the new co-op aims to raise money and act as a broker to help condo boards and other organizations install power centers across the city, eventually building a greener and more resilient electrical grid. Continue to the entire article

HUFFINGTON POST CANADA: Ontario’s Nanticoke, North America’s Former Largest Coal Plant, To Reopen As Solar Farm

A Conservative politician is calling it “lipstick on a pig,” but community and business leaders in southern Ontario are hailing a plan to turn North America’s largest coal-fired power plant into a solar farm.

The Nanticoke Generating Station, on the shore of Lake Erie, has been idle since 2013, when it was shut down as part of the province’s successful effort to eliminate coal from its energy mix.

Now the plant is set to reopen as the site of a wind farm that is being developed with the help of First Nations business leaders.

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has granted Nanticoke Solar a permit to generate 44 megawatts of power on the site, one of 11 new renewable-energy projects that got the green light last week. Continue to the entire article